


Questions & Answers

by ChaoticFriendly



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Daichi has some anxiety, Getting Back Together, If you're not already in love with sugawara koushi you're wrong, Long-Suffering Sawamura Daichi, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not like that you perv, Only happy endings I promise, Sawamura Family if you Blink, Suga has some personal struggles, Sugawara Family if you Blink Faster, Teacher Sugawara Koushi, Ugh why do I write angst when I only end up hurting myself, watch me make everyone fall in love with sawamura daichi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28564077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticFriendly/pseuds/ChaoticFriendly
Summary: It had been nine years since Sugawara Koushi had first brightened Daichi’s life with a broad smile and a halo of silver hair.It had been six years since Sugawara Koushi had broken Daichi’s heart with a murmured apology and no backwards glance.It had been twelve hours since Sugawara Koushi had shown up on Daichi’s front door with a plate of brownies in hand.---How long is too long to try again?
Relationships: Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 62





	Questions & Answers

It had been nine years since Sugawara Koushi had first brightened Daichi’s life with a broad smile and a halo of silver hair. 

It had been six years since Sugawara Koushi had broken Daichi’s heart with a murmured apology and no backward glance. 

It had been twelve hours since Sugawara Koushi had shown up on Daichi’s front door with a plate of brownies in hand. 

_“Hey, Daichi.”_

That rough-sweet voice, one he thought he’d left behind so long ago, burned a hole straight through his chest. At that moment Daichi barely remembered his own name, much less how to reach out and accept the brownies and birthday card being handed to him. He vaguely heard the words being spoken and felt himself nodding dumbly. Finally remembering how to speak, he’d set a time and place for them to meet and shut the door softly behind Suga’s retreating frame. 

Suga wanted to talk? What was there to say after so long? Daichi wasn’t sure, but he’d agreed to meet on New Year’s Day at the shrine they used to visit together so many years ago. 

He tried to return to the birthday celebration his mom and siblings had put together for him, but it wasn’t the same. Concerned looks from his sister and knowing ones from his mother chased Daichi out of the warm family kitchen fairly quickly as night fell. Once the house was quiet with only the sounds of his sleeping family, the soft breaths and quiet rumbles soothing in their familiarity, it had been all too easy to fall into memories he’d long tried to repress. 

\---

Daichi had learned early on that Suga wasn’t all silver light and charming laughs muffled behind slender fingers. So what else was hidden there? Daichi had been willing to find out. 

He found Suga’s feral joy that caught like wildfire after a great game, but he also discovered the suffocating self-doubt when Suga felt he was unworthy of the team he so loved. Suga didn’t share those feelings in words, but the light that spilled from him on good days was as warm as any sunny sky, and the darkness he tried to contain wrapped tendrils around Daichi’s own heart. So much deep-rooted fear and insecurity might have sent someone else running, but Daichi leaned in further, craning his neck to find more of the light within the depths, not noticing the anger he amassed at the reasons behind Suga’s shadows. 

He asked nothing of Suga for a time, simply basking in the glow of their friendship, but always wondering if it could be something more. Wondering if _he_ could be something more for Suga.

Daichi found the answer to that in the little equipment room of their gym, where Suga had been fighting off tears after seeing Kageyama’s natural ability on the court. The silver-haired setter would never complain to the team or put Kageyama aside for his pride, but Daichi knew in the way Suga’s shoulders stayed perfectly squared that his best friend was struggling with those demons he’d faced downtime and time again on the court. At that moment, in relative privacy amongst mops and net equipment, Daichi had put a hand on Suga’s shoulder. The gentle contact felt like a searing burn against his palm as he struggled with how to tell his vice-captain that he was in no way second-best, not to Daichi. 

Suga’s smile at the touch had been watery but true, he’d tried to play it off like a moment of feeling overwhelmed. “Daichi, I’m a mess, I’m sorry. Just give me a minute and I’ll be okay.” The sniffle in his voice gave him away.

Daichi’s mouth had worked faster than his brain. 

“You’re not a mess. You’re beautiful.” 

He’d closed the small gap between them, reaching a hand out to lace their fingers together. Suga’s bright eyes followed the motion, staring down at the interlocked hands before turning his gaze up to Daichi’s eyes, his mouth. 

Unsure of what he was doing, but somehow confident it was the right thing, Daichi leaned forward. When their lips had met, soft and a little wet, it was a definitive response to a question they’d never voiced aloud. 

\---

Getting together had hardly been perfect – who kisses their best friend when they’re crying? Despite outward appearances, they’d never been perfect together, Daichi and Suga. Easy friendship turned into easy love, but nothing was ever easy all the time. 

They’d pushed each other’s buttons constantly. Suga pressed Daichi to be more than just the volleyball team captain. He constantly reminded Daichi that after they graduated he wouldn’t have any kohai-related fires to put out. He wouldn’t have to force Hinata and Kageyama to behave. He wouldn’t have to glare at Tsukishima every time he made a cutting remark. There would be no Noya or Tanaka to stir up trouble left and right. And what then? What would Daichi do once he didn’t have a pack of scoundrel teenagers to look after? Daichi didn’t have an answer. 

Daichi just wanted Suga to live in the moment with him. He’d always retort that they had time, and their futures weren’t going anywhere so why rush towards a burnout? Suga had always frowned at that, mouth creasing at the corners, and he would only sometimes let Daichi kiss the lines away. 

Suga in turn was nagged by Daichi about his own goals. He’d been pressured for a long time to follow the family tradition to become a lawyer, but that never felt right to Daichi. One quiet night after Daichi and Suga had finally wrangled all of the little Sawamura siblings to bed, Suga sat on a stool in the kitchen, face flushed and foot shaking nervously. He’d finally admitted he wanted to teach, and Daichi’s smile had broken open like a treasure chest. He was in full support, he’d never liked Suga’s father pressuring him to the lawyer track, but for Suga it wasn’t that easy. Didn’t he owe his father something? Was that worth more than what he owed himself? Suga didn’t know. 

They went in circle after circle, and after a while, the fighting had become as easy as the not-fighting. Suga added cutting remarks as Daichi grew increasingly louder in his retorts. The circles of arguments grew until it surrounded them both, muddling the feelings with anger and anxiety.

Suga asked Daichi if there was anything in his thick skull beside the next game? He didn’t seem to notice the burning anger that shone through Daichi’s eyes at the insinuation. 

Daichi had asked Suga who he was planning a future for – his father or them? It never occurred to him that both options were the reason for Suga’s flinching away. 

\---

They fought in private, in the quiet of their rooms, or the solitude of their walks home together. It never spilled over into their time with their team or families, but the built-up pressure had to burst through the cracks eventually. Daichi never questioned when that breaking point would be, looking back, he should have.

When Suga asked Daichi to come over after graduation to talk, it was a lot less talking and a lot more of them breaking each other’s hearts. Or at least, Suga breaking Daichi’s. Tears, hot and heavy, fell from Daichi’s eyes as he did nothing to stop them. What was the point? The boy he’d loved for as long as they’d known each other didn’t love him anymore. Well, not exactly, but didn’t think they should be together anymore. 

His heart felt like the aftermath of a forest fire, all scorched earth and charred landscapes. Daichi didn’t think anything would grow there again. 

Suga had it in his head they _had_ to grow and that they had to grow apart from each other. He maintained that your first love couldn’t be your last love because life just didn’t work that way. Didn’t his own parents’ relationship prove that? 

They’d spent so much time together after school at the Sawamura house in highschool because Suga was with Daichi, yes, and also because there were significantly fewer whispered arguments and pointed glares at the Sawamura house. There was a warmth in that home that Suga’s own had lacked for as long as he could remember. The photos of his parents on the walls held smiles from ages fifteen to fifty, but the smiles no longer reached the eyes of their real-life counterparts. 

All through high school, Daichi knew Suga craved security after his own family issues, and if Suga spent at least four nights a week having dinner at the Sawamura house, with Daichi’s hand firmly gripping his own under the table, no one questioned it. The Sawamura family’s grounding presence and happy lifestyle seemed to be the only thing that kept Suga from running home in tears some days, and that knowledge had only made Daichi’s anger burn hotter, their fights more explosive. Suga may have felt worthless to the team at times, but Daichi knew that feeling all too well when it came to their relationship. 

So after graduation, when most third years were out celebrating, Suga was sobbing into Daichi’s shoulder as Daichi tried to ask ‘why?’, tried to understand ‘how?’. 

Suga could barely hear himself think over his own gasping breaths, but Daichi’s low rumble broke through like it did everything else. 

“Koushi, if it hurts this much maybe it means we should just-“ 

“Dai, no.” Suga had cut his question off with a rough whisper, sitting up to look at his boyfriend fully in the face. “We can’t stay together. You can’t stay with me.” 

Daichi’s brow had furrowed at that. They sat together on the front step of the Sugawara house, a house they rarely spent time at unless Suga’s parents were out. They were home now, just in the backyard with some of Suga’s other family, family Daichi had never met. He’d thought he’d been coming over to be introduced as Suga’s boyfriend, not left behind as Suga’s ex. His voice trembled a little, he hoped Suga didn’t hear. 

“You’re not making sense, Kou. _Why?_ ”

“Because,” and Suga tried to answer in a way that made sense, he really did, “you have to become you and you can’t do that if you’re you and me.” 

“Is…” and then Daichi’s voice had faltered, the slight stumble wedging deep into the already-present crack in Suga’s heart, “Is there someone else? You can tell me.”

“Daichi, _no._ ” and his voice broke. That was when his resolve nearly crumbled. He leaned forward, resting his head against Daichi’s warm shoulder, tears flowing freely as he pulled his hand out of Daichi’s warm grip. “There’s no one else. But there should be, for you.” 

\---

Daichi grieved. He burned. He questioned. And eventually, he understood. He’d built his plans back up, alone, tending gently to the scorched earth of his heart, encouraging something, anything, to grow there. He remembered Suga telling him he couldn’t put out fires forever. So maybe it was with a little bit of petty anger that he abandoned his half-hearted college dreams and found himself at the Fire Academy. Weeks of training and honing his skills burned off any residual anger (and baby fat), and when he graduated it was with a newfound devotion to his career, his family of coworkers, and his community as well as an inner sense of recognition that this was what he was meant to do and who he was meant to be. In quiet moments between sleep and waking, when strands of starlight slipped from his dream-addled mind, he found himself wondering if Suga would approve of how he’d turned out. He tried not to wonder if Suga had found the same thing for himself, or if he’d found some _one_ instead of something.

The wondering and not wondering was too much. With what free time he had available, Daichi started partnering with Big Brothers & Sisters to work with kids who needed support. He told himself it was because he missed caring for his siblings, and not because of long-repressed memories of Suga fondly tucking in his little sisters, or reading stories to his little brothers. 

Instead of working with the sunny little bundles of joy that pulled a smile from him the way Hinata and Yamaguchi always had, he found boys and girls whose life situations fanned at dark flames inside, ones that reminded him of setters he’d once known. He helped these kids discover what burned their rage out. He’d taken groups on morning runs and tried his hand at painting. He’d learned woodworking with one teenage boy and piano with an adolescent girl. It felt right, helping kids with their anger issues and deep-rooted anxieties as much as he could. And if the question of ‘What would Suga think of this?’ ever crossed his mind, he refused to answer.

Looking back, he wished he’d been more aware of how volleyball did that for him – helped him channel the blaze of anxieties and rage inside. Maybe he would have been able to explain that to Suga, but no... That’s not what the point of it all was. Well, that’s not what the point of it all was supposed to be. 

And yet, when he’d finished his first woodworking project with his current little brother partner, a set of windchimes for his mother’s garden, he’d immediately wanted to show Suga, wanted to ask him what he thought of the delicate tinkling of silvery chimes attached to deep brown wood. 

It had been such a sudden thought, pulled from his chest like a sudden gasp of air. He’d sat on the floor of the workspace, focusing only on breathing in and out as images of fluffy hair and cheeky winks faded from his mind. But in that momentary paralysis he’d noticed something, he’d stopped questioning their time together and Suga’s decision, he’d stopped searching for solutions to long-gone problems. He just knew he missed Suga. 

That had been over a year ago. 

\---

Now lying here after a night of restless sleep and dreams plagued with memories, in the bed they had once shared as teenagers, he had to acknowledge an answer he’d carried with him for as long as he could remember. It was Suga. It had always been Suga. Even as Suga had been breaking his heart, Daichi had loved him. Even as Daichi had traded soft words in the night with other men, it had been Suga, and even here now, lying awake with the sun peeking through dark curtains after only seeing him once in six years, it was Suga. 

It made him angry again. 

Fuck. 

But why? He wasn’t that person anymore. He hadn’t been that person for a long time. He wasn’t angry at Suga, or the brownies, or even himself, he was stressed at the unknown. 

When he had been with Suga he’d known what they were. When he wasn’t with Suga he’d known what he was. When they were fighting he hadn't known where they stood, and it had been upsetting and made him angry. And now, they’d be together for the first time without being _together_ and that unknown was making him upset and he was once again translating that to anger.

That settled, Daichi was able to breathe the anger out. It had been a long time of practicing good habits to be able to whittle his angry reactions down to logical feelings. A small sense of pride swelled within, this is what he’d spent so much time working with his little siblings to be able to do. It was nice that after so much preaching, he’d been able to put it into practice himself. 

Long steadying breaths cooled the heat threatening to boil over, and what he was left with he did not put a name to. He did not dare to hope. He could not. 

He’d been frozen solid at the sight of Suga on his doorstep. He must have looked like an idiot, standing there without the ability to form words. But he’d agreed to meet with Suga to talk. Today. But about what? He should have asked before agreeing, but he’d always agreed to anything Suga wanted, including breaking up. 

He’d done what Suga had wanted in life, right? He’d grown? He wasn’t living for Suga, he was living for himself, even if Suga had always been with him in some way. So why hadn’t he moved from bed yet? Why hadn’t he gotten up and brushed his teeth and put on his best jeans and hurried to the shrine where Suga was surely waiting? 

He just had so many questions. 

Moving to sit at the edge of the bed, he dropped his head in his hands and checked the clock. 9am. The only answer he had right now was to the question ‘What will you do next?’ and that one was blessedly easy. He’d go for a run and then shower and then meet with Suga. They’d been waiting for this conversation for six years in some way or another, what was a few more hours? 

The sun had passed its peak by the time Daichi arrived at the shrine. He should have felt bad, Suga must have been here most of the day and was likely half frozen. But Daichi felt only nerves like an itch under his freshly-scrubbed skin. 

He paused, eyes catching sight of a slim figure on a bench across the paved plaza, watching the anxious movements of hands under long coat sleeves. He didn’t remain unnoticed for long. Like a beacon calling him home, Suga’s hazel eyes lifted in sudden certainty, meeting Daichi’s brown again. Even across the crowded space, with the sun at Suga’s back, Daichi could see a galaxy of thoughts and questions tumbling around Suga’s mind. Daichi knew at that moment there was nothing left for him to ask. 

Instead of feeling frozen as he did yesterday, Daichi felt alive. He felt full of hope, yes hope, he was going to name it now, and possibility, in a way he hadn’t felt in years. The slight heaviness of his muscles from a slightly-too-long morning run was all that kept him grounded as his heart lifted with each closer step to Suga’s erect frame. 

Reaching his goal, Daichi lowered a gloved hand down and was rewarded with a small smile as Suga accepted the offered tea from Daichi’s grip. With his now-free hand, he continued reaching down, rewarded again with a bigger smile and Suga’s hand in his own. He pulled the smaller man off the bench and let go after a small squeeze, a question that needed only one answer: the soft responding pressure. Hiding his widening grin, Daichi dropped the hand softly and made his way to the shrine, not needing to look back to know Suga followed not a half step behind. 

Offering their respects and silent wishes for the year ahead, their eyes met hesitantly once or twice before they moved back to Suga’s bench.

They talked. Suga asked questions that had been burning within for the last six years. Daichi gave answers that he’d been ready to share for as long as Suga had been wanting to ask.

Daichi talked about his graduation from the Fire Academy (which Suga already knew from keeping tabs via the Tanakas) and what it had meant to find a secondary family after high school. He shared his involvement with Big Brothers & Sisters and how it had helped Daichi in ways he’d never imagined (which Suga did not know and had him reduced to tears for reasons he couldn’t articulate). 

Suga filled Daichi in on his teaching certification, and his eyes take on a hazy glow as he mentions some of the kids who have really impacted him and how Takeda-sensei supported him when his own father refused. Daichi pretended like the Tanakas didn’t also keep him informed of these developments, but his spreading smile as Suga’s voice filled his chest was in no way faked.

They shared highlights, filling in the empty pages and chapters of their stories. It was easy, even if it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes they interrupted each other or talked over one another. Sometimes the words came hard or not at all, but somewhere through it, Suga’s hand found its way back into Daichi’s. There’s something more sure about it than there had been in the past. Instead of Daichi holding onto Suga, their hands fit together in equal pressure (if not warmth, but Suga’s hands have always run cold). 

It thrills something deep in Daichi to think that maybe this is how it was supposed to be. Maybe this was what Suga had meant to have happened all along. That young bright-eyed, bright-haired boy was long gone, but to Daichi, he seemed brighter than ever. He held himself upright easily, with no sign of the weight of self-doubt he’d once carried as a second skin. Daichi hoped if he burned brighter, it was with his own place of security and self-worth. The look in Suga’s eyes told him that just might be the case. 

After a long time, they left with no further questions on what they were and what they would be. 

Daichi’s rough palm gripped tight against Suga’s softer one, the darkness of the night hiding the blush across Suga’s cheekbones when Daichi brushed Suga’s knuckles lightly across his lips. 

It had been nine years since Sawamura Daichi had first made Suga’s heart race with a rumbled ‘hello’ and kind smile. 

It had been six years since Sawamura Daichi had left Suga, with a final wet kiss, sobbing on his front steps after graduation. 

It had been twenty-four hours since Sawamura Daichi had accepted a plate of brownies when really Suga had wanted to offer his heart on a platter. 

And it had been three hours since Sawamura Daichi and Sugawara Koushi locked eyes across a crowded plaza and found every answer they needed for all the years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember that time I posted something without having [ FireheartAW ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireHeartAW/pseuds/FireHeartAW) beta? Yeah me neither.  
> ANDIE AS ALWAYS, MY LIFE IS YOURS. Thank you for always supporting my Daisuga Soul. 
> 
> \---
> 
> Feel free to come yell Daisuga (or other HQ) things at me on Twitter [ @ChaoticFriendly ](https://twitter.com/ChaoticFriendly).  
> And if you feel inclined to leave a comment I promise I'll respond with unintelligible screaming bc I'll be so excited that you commented!


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